Folk Poetry of Modern Greece


Book Description

A wide-ranging study of popular poetry and songs from the end of the Byzantine Empire to the present.




Harsh Out of Tenderness


Book Description

Elias Petropoulos was the most controversial Greek writer of the twentieth century. Imprisoned three times during the Junta (1967-1974) and persecuted by Greek judges as late as the 1980s, this poet and "urban folklorist" produced a vast and groundbreaking oeuvre that continues to provoke extreme reactions from readers. Wielding his precise and provocative style on subject matter ranging from prison life, rebetika music, gay slang, traditional food and public hygiene, to the sociology of brothels, newspaper stands, moustaches, canes and gravestones, Petropoulos aggressively and rigorously challenged the narrow ways in which Greek culture was perceived.After arriving in Paris from the island of Samos in 1977, the American writer, critic and translator John Taylor tacked up a want ad in a Greek bookshop because he was seeking a collaborator for a translation project. Petropoulos, who emigrated to France in 1975, answered the want ad, and thus began a close working relationship that lasted until the author's death in 2003. This insider's portrait features translated excerpts of Petropoulos's writings, and discusses his ideas and methodology, woven together with touching reminiscences and observations about the man behind the sulphurous reputation. It is the first book to appear in English that deals so thoroughly and poetically with this enfant terrible of Modern Greek letters.




Neo-Hellene Poets


Book Description

The most extensive and most comprehensible anthology of modern Greek poetry in English.While many serious readers in Canada will have been exposed to the ancients, and to the works of some, high-profile modernists--like Cafavy, Seferis and, perhaps, even Ritsos --most modern Greek poetry has remained largely out of reach for English-speaking monoglots. But that is changing quickly, chiefly as the result of the efforts of one man. Enter Manolis Aligizakis, a Greek-Canadian poet of considerable lyrical achievements of his own. Quite apart from having published many volumes of his own much-celebrated poems, Manolis has, for years now, devoted himself to preparing high-quality and nuanced translations of the works of modern Greek poets. He has to this point given us his take mainly on the above-mentioned and better-known writers (for which we are all grateful). Now, however, he has graduated to a truly Heraclean undertaking, one that opens the door for English-speaking readers to the work of many highly respected Greek poets who, it is to be regretted, are essentially unknown outside their own country. Neo-Hellene Poets: An Anthology of Modern Greek Poetry, 1750 - 2018 is a skeleton key to the poems of 60 Greek moderns whose writings, we can now easily see, deserve a wider readership. The deft and skilled translations that make up the Anthology are helpfully supplemented by brief but informative biographical profiles of the subject poets, putting them on the map for Englishspeaking readers in a way that has never been done before.




Greek Poetry, from Homer to Seferis


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Voices of Modern Greece


Book Description

This anthology is composed of revised translations selected from five volumes of work by major poets of modern Greece offered by Keeley and Sherrard during the 1960s and '70s. Poems chosen are those that translate most successfully into English and that are also representative of the best work of the original poets--C.P. Cavafy, Angelos Sikelianos, George Seferis, Odysseus Elytis, and Nikos Gatsos.




The Power of Pygmalion


Book Description

This book explores the relationship between ancient Greek sculpture and modern Greek poetry between 1860 and 1960. It examines in some detail poems by Vasileiadis, Rangavis, Palamas, Cavafy, Sikelianos and Seferis, and shows how these poets appropriate the art of sculpture and in what ways this contributes to our understanding of each poet's poetics. Ancient Greek sculpture and sculptural imagery related to it are inevitably associated with the Classical heritage and bring the issue of ancient tradition and its relation to the modern artist into a prominent position. What is more, sculpture is particularly important for the erotic dimension through which the poets perceive their relation with art, and each poet systematically uses the image of the sculptor to define his perception of the artist. In both cases the myth of Pygmalion may be seen as successfully embodying each poet's relation with art and tradition.




The King of Asine


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Homerica


Book Description

Translated from the Greek by Brian Sneeden. For the first time in English--a volume of poems by one of Greece's foremost poetic voices. Phoebe Giannisi's Homerica offers a contemporary Odyssey of loss, longing, motherhood, and metamorphosis, re-weaving classical mythology with modern experience. Yet the mythic characters and scenes never feel otherworldly--rather, they appear alongside the tugboat, the bicycle, the television, and the helicopter. Brian Sneeden's masterful translation captures the Delphic rhythms of Giannisi's oracular poems, which rarely travel in a straight line but rather glide across multiple threads of time, like a look interweaving strands of the mythological past. "Giannisi's poetry is a wonderful combination of the classical and the underground avant-garde. Trained both in architecture and Ancient Greek, her poems tackle the problem of how to inhabit the spaces we live in--from the abandoned lot and the swimming pool to the page of the book. What a pleasure to have the full Homerica series in Brian Sneeden's lyrical translation."--Karen Van Dyck "Sneeden is a meticulous translator and a poet in his own right. He brings Phoebe Giannisi's work to life with immediacy and conviction."--Edmund Keeley "Phoebe Giannisi's poetry collection Homerica is a reinvention of Greek lyric verse and its language."--Shon Arieh-Lerer, World Literature Today "[An] unusually excellent translation." -- Anne Carson, The Paris Review Literary Nonfiction. Film. "A nuanced, clear set of poems that seamlessly articulate homeward journeys--wherever one's home may be."--Kirkus Reviews Poetry. Women's Studies. Greek Studies.




On Poetry


Book Description

“This is a book for anyone,” Glyn Maxwell declares of On Poetry. A guide to the writing of poetry and a defense of the art, it will be especially prized by writers and readers who wish to understand why and how poetic technique matters. When Maxwell states, “With rhyme what matters is the distance between rhymes” or “the line-break is punctuation,” he compresses into simple, memorable phrases a great deal of practical wisdom. In seven chapters whose weird, gnomic titles announce the singularity of the book—“White,” “Black,” “Form,” “Pulse,” “Chime,” “Space,” and “Time”—the poet explores his belief that the greatest verse arises from a harmony of mind and body, and that poetic forms originate in human necessities: breath, heartbeat, footstep, posture. “The sound of form in poetry descended from song, molded by breath, is the sound of that creature yearning to leave a mark. The meter says tick-tock. The rhyme says remember. The whiteness says alone,” Maxwell writes. To illustrate his argument, he draws upon personal touchstones such as Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost. An experienced teacher, Maxwell also takes us inside the world of the creative writing class, where we learn from the experiences of four aspiring poets. “You master form you master time,” Maxwell says. In this guide to the most ancient and sublime of the realms of literature, Maxwell shares his mastery with us.




Medieval and Modern Greek


Book Description

Traces the history of the Greek language from the immediately postclassical or Hellenistic period to the present day. In particular, the historical roots of modern Greek internal bilingualism are traced. First published by Hutchinson in 1969, the work has been substantially revised and updated.